Wedding Daze
by Morwen Tindomerel
Summary: Meet the only people in Ankh-Morpork Captain Samuel Vimes truly fears, his sisters. Maybe he didn't pay much attention to his wedding, but they did.
1. Chapter 1

"My lady?" It was necessary for Willikins to raise his voice above the hungry gobbling of his employer's dragons. A face rendered expressionless by leather and isinglass turned towards him.

"Yes?"

"Several ladies have called, my lady." Willikin proffered the silver card tray. "I put them in the mildly pink drawing room, my lady."

Sybil Ramkin shoveled the last of the coal into the feeding troughs and walked down the long aisle between the dragon pens towards the butler standing, with sensible caution, just outside the doorway. She pulled off helmet and gauntlets and picked up the bits of pasteboard on the tray.

Two were standard calling cards, one engraved with the name Mrs. Susannah Hobbs, the other Mrs. Sarah Brass. Both had addresses on Brookless lane. (1) The other two were business cards belonging to a Mrs. Silvia Camphor Sick Nurse, Midwife, and Herbalist of Cheap street; and Mrs. Sophia Pratt Headmistress of the Elmstreet School, Elm Street.

Lady Sybil had never heard of any of them in her entire life.

"Is it some kind of subscription, Willikins?" she asked, bewildered.

"Not so far as I could see, my lady."

Sybil shrugged helplessly under her heavy protective gear. "I suppose I had better see them. Bring us some tea will you, Willikins."

"Yes, my lady."

-----

A sketchily washed and brushed Lady Sybil in an only slightly singed afternoon dress walked into the mildly pink drawing room. Four ladies came to their feet and one swept forward to offer her hand.

"Lady Sybil? I'm Sukey Hobbs, Sam's eldest sister."

Her ladyship's eyes widened in sudden comprehension. "Oh, of course. Sam said he had sisters."

"And not much else I'm betting." The wry smile was unnervingly familiar, as was the square set jaw and steely glint of the eye. Mrs. Hobbs shook her head. "My brother is not the most communicative of men." She turned to present the others: "And these are our other sisters; Sally Brass, Silvie Camphor and Sophie Pratt."

All four ladies had the Vimes jaw and eye but otherwise varied considerably. Sukey was nearly as tall as Sybil herself but had Sam's wiry thinness and a great deal of dark mouse hair. Sally was a handsome, middle aged woman distinctly fuller in figure with almost blue eyes and fair hair. Silvie was the most like Sam to look at, she even radiated the same aura of angered innocence that made Sam the unique and wonderful man he was in Sybil's eyes. Silvie's hair was quite gray and screwed back in an unbecoming but functional knot. Sophie resembled Sally, being fair and curvy, but was possessed of a considerable presence - which also reminded Sybil of her intended - and she had a pince-nez perched on the end of her undistinguished nose.

"Our dear brother only troubled to inform us of his engagement yesterday or we would have called long ago," Susannah - Sybil simply could not think of her as a 'Sukey' - continued, sitting down. "I understand the wedding is set for the twenty-eighth of Grune?"

"Er, yes," said Sybil, somewhat bemused at finding herself in the presence of four Vimes at once. One alone tended to be a little overwhelming.

"If we can be of any assistance at all please don't hesitate to ask," Sally said kindly. "Sukey and I are barely a step away."

"So I see." Sybil made an effort to pull herself together. "No doubt we would have met long ago if I went about more."

Susannah laughed. "Oh no, Sally and I are in trade and quite beneath the notice of the great folk. Thank the gods!"

"We're co-owners of the Supermarkets," her sister put in, to ease over any awkwardness caused by such plain speaking. "Of course we don't have any branches on the Ankh side of the river but the middling folk of Morpork find them very convenient."

Susannah nodded. "We have greengrocer, dry goods, hardware, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, all under one roof. One stop shopping we call it."

"Really," Sybil said, genuinely impressed. "What a very clever idea."

Thank you," said Susannah. "We thought so."

"And you're a nurse, Mrs. Camphor?" Sybil said turning to her silent visitors.

She flashed a brief , businesslike smile. "Silvie, please, we are going to be near relatives are we not? Yes, my practice is downtown, the Shades and parts widdershins of it." She gestured at her youngest sister. "Sophie here is quite an important person these days. She's Principal of the Teacher's Guild."

"That wasn't on your card," Sybil said with interest.

Sophie shrugged. "I'm not going to throw away a lot of perfectly good business cards. Principal will go on the next lot."

"Very sensible," Sybil agreed warmly. She was beginning to like these unpretentious future sisters-in-law of hers.

----

"The trouble with Sam is he's so proud - and stubborn with it," Sybil said, emptying the last drops from the decanter into her glass, the stiff formality of tea having given way to the easy conviviality of sherry some little time ago.

Sally Brass nodded. "Don't we know it. You can't imagine the trouble we have getting him to accept the occasional meal from his own dear sisters!"

"Or a new shirt or pair of socks," Susannah Hobbs agreed.

"I offered to buy him a good pair of boots last week, the ones he's got are a disgrace - cardboard soles, actual cardboard - and he practically bit my head off." Sybil blinked back sudden tears. "I suppose after we're married -"

"I wouldn't count on that, Sybbie dear," said Silvie Camphor shaking her head. "It'll still be your money as far as our Sam is concerned."

"Oh no," Sophie Pratt protested. "Surely not even our Sam could be that thick headed?"

"Care to put a fiver on that, Sophie?" Silvie inquired.

She thought a moment, then grimaced. "No."

"I won't have it!" Sybil declaimed, slamming her glass down on a table so hard that the crystal rang - and Willikins, hovering in the background, winced. "I'm not going to have my husband - my own husband - walking around on cardboard soles because he won't live off his wife! It will be our money, won't he understand that?"

"Knowing Sam, no," Susannah said gloomily.

All five women contemplated this unpalatable fact gloomily.

An idea dawned in Sybil's eye, gradually irradiating her whole face. "What if it were his money?"

"But it's not." Susannah pointed out.

"How can it be?" Sally wondered.

"Oh!" said Sophie, eyes widening in sudden comprehension.

"Oh what?" Silvie demanded.

Sybil smiled, satisfaction oozing from every pore of her sizeable body. "Back in the olden days everything a wife had became her husband's upon marriage."

"Well, yes," Susannah conceded. "But that was a long time ago."

"The law is changed, now," added Sally. The two of them had gone into the matter in great detail before their own marriages - just to be sure.

"It's been amended," Sophie corrected. "I remember Jack explaining it to me at some length in connection with his paper on the devolution of the de Moustache title. (2) A lady doesn't have to avail herself of the new protections, she can let the old law take effect - if she wants to."

Sybil nodded triumphantly. "Exactly. Old Morecombe went through the whole thing with me yesterday morning. I can let Sam have it all."

Susannah was grinning to match her sister-in-law-to-be. "And not even our Sam can possibly object to his wife spending his money on him, can he?"

-----

Sam Vimes blinked as the front door to the Ramkin mansion opened unexpectedly in his face and took a quick step back to keep from colliding with his eldest sister. "Sukey?" He did not sound pleased.

"Ah, Sammy," she said calmly, smoothing on her gloves. "We were just leaving -"

"We?" He saw, with mounting horror, that his three younger sisters were right behind her - and Sybil. Oh gods!

Sally bussed him lightly on the cheek. "Of course. It's etiquette for the relatives of the Groom to call on the family of the Bride, don't you know."

"Of course he doesn't," Silvie said crisply after her own peck. "Our Sam knows everything there is to know about coppering and absolutely nothing about how normal people live."

"You and Sybil are coming to dinner at my house tomorrow," Sally told him, adding over her shoulder: "And try to get him to wear something other than his uniform won't you, Sybbie?"

Sybbie?

"It's all right for the Groom to accept a present from the Bride, you know," Sophie whispered in his ear with her kiss.

"Don't look so horrified, Sammy. I assure you we have been models of discretion," Sukey said laughing.

"Not one story of your misspent youth," Sally assured him.

"We don't want to put Sybbie off now do we?" said Sophie, adding to Sybil. "It will be a vast relief to know some responsible person is finally looking after our Sam."

"Too right." Silvie agreed. And off they went down the path to a waiting carriage.

Sam looked helplessly at Sybil, face burning. His intended gave him her big, beaming smile. "Come in, Sam dear, you're just in time for dinner."

----

1. A fashionable street on the upscale Ankh side of the river just below the Tump.

2. Professor John Pratt, Deputy Headmaster of the Elmstreet School, is also a well known historian specializing in the Veltrick Era (3)

3. The period, 1486 to 1603 U.C., during which Ank-Morpork was governed by the six kings and two queens of the Veltrick dynasty: Audebert Veltrick who took the throne from Henricus the Hunchbacked assumed the royal title of King Cirone I and was called 'the Unsteady' for his precarious grip on said throne (1486-1509). He was followed by Cirone II, popularly known as 'Greenbeard' (1509-1547) who was succeeded by his three children, one after the other: Cirone III 'the Assassin' (1547-1553) (4); Queen Ondine 'the Dumpy' (1553-1558) and Queen Candace 'the Man-Hater' (1558-1562). King Veltrick I, grandson of Cirone I's younger son the Duke of Veltrick, succeeded Queen Candace (1562) followed by Veltrick II 'the Parricide', briefly the husband of the Empress Rehenna of Sto Lat (1562-1571) and Veltrick III, Veltrick II's son by his first wife Lady Ann Wickware, the 'Bachelor King' (1571-1603)

4. The Veltrick Cirones belonged to a quite different dynasty and so numbered themselves all over again despite there being some record of earlier Cirones who were Kings of Ankh back in the Good Old Days. As it happens by Veltrick times the number of earlier Cirones had been all but forgotten and the deeds of all five Ankhian monarchs of that name were commonly credited to two legendary figures known respectively as Cirone the Builder (fl. 3rd c. B.U.C.) and Cirone the Wise (fl. 2nd c. B.U.C.) There was also an earlier Veltrick (fl. c. 11th c. B.U.C.) from whom the later dynasty rather questionably claimed descent.


	2. Chapter 2

Filigree street, on the Morpork shore of the Ankh, was a rather downscale neighborhood of warehouses and workshops, nor did the presence of the infamous Mended Drum do anything to elevate the ambience of the area. A coach and four rattled along the cobbles reining to halt before an old brick warehouse. A husky footman hopped down and handed out a lady in silk and lace with lavender plumes waving on her hat. Normally such a vision would attract a certain kind of attention in this part of town, footman and coachman not-withstanding, but those so inclined took note of the address and hastily passed on.

An open gate led to a cramped yard with a planked over well in a corner and a rickety wooden stair climbing the wall. At the top was an unpainted door. The lady knocked.

After a moment it was opened by a small, twitchy ferret of a man unconvincingly dressed in the livery of a gentleman's gentleman and surrounded by almost visible clouds of expensive scent. He jumped a little at the sight of the caller. "Oh! Oh, miss, it's you."

"That's right, Lonely," (1) the lady answered tranquilly. "My brother is in?"

The little man squirmed in his fancy clothes. "Uh, yes...that is...well..yes," he stuttered as the lady caller calmly brushed by him into the long room.

It was not the sort of room one expected to find in an old warehouse on the Morpork shore. The walls were covered with stamped leather of a rich claret red, the ceiling rafters painted with designs in red, green and gold like a reflection of the deep, soft Klatchian carpets below. The furniture was uniformly fine, valuable antique pieces mingling with expensively comfortable modern chairs and sofas.

Lonely pattered after the lady. "Mr. Sim? It's Miss Sallie, Mr. Sim."

"So I heard," said a deep leather chair before the hearth. A man rose from it book in hand to regard Sallie Brass, nee Vimes, with a certain disfavor. It would have been immediately clear to any observer unaware of the fact - as Lonely was not - that the two were near relatives. Neither was tall, both were rather broad in body and in face and yet despite abundant flesh there was something elusively granitic about the latter, especially in the gentleman's case. His eyes were gray, and bleak and empty as a Sektober sky.

"What do you want, Sal?"

She took a small square of engraved pasteboard from her purse and handed it to him. "You're coming to dinner at my house tomorrow night."

"The hell I am!"

Sallie ignored the eruption. "We're meeting Sam's intended. Be there by seven if you please."

"Sallie, I am about the last person Sam wants to see -"

"Sybil is to be introduced to the family. You are part of the family. Besides, Miss Green needs more material."

"Sallie -"

"No excuses, Sim!"

Brother and sister glared at each other. A pair of Vimes giving each other the eye is indeed a fearsome sight. Lonely looked away trembling. The unobservant frequently mistook Sallie Brass's matronly plumpness and fair coloring as signs of a soft and yielding nature, but it was not a mistake her own brother was likely to make.

'Stoney' Sim might be the most dangerous man in all of Ankh-Morpork, but he knew very well who the most dangerous women were. And he knew much, much better than to cross any of them. "Yes, Sallie," he said resignedly.

"Good boy." She turned to go. "See you tomorrow, Sim."

-----

Sam Vimes couldn't stand the icy silence inside the coach one more minute.

"I'm sorry, Sybil."

Nothing.

"It's a fine coat, really. Practical as well as handsome. And I expect you're right about the silk stocking and shoes too," he continued a little desperately. "But I'm not a gentleman, Sybil -"

She turned to him, big tears standing in her eyes reflecting the pale early evening light. "But you are, Sam!. The finest I've ever known. A truly noble man -" her voice broke and she sniffled, groping for her pocket handkerchief.

The heat Sam was feeling had nothing to do with Ankh-Morpork's baking summer temperature. His ears were practically lambent. Oh gods! He swallowed the lump in his throat and managed to say, "I don't know how to be a gentleman, or noble, but I'll do my best for you, sweetheart." He was rewarded by a big, damp smile and a grip that almost crushed his hand.

Sybil couldn't have done worse. So he'd just have to be better.

----

No. 13 Brookless lane was a tall, white house in neo-Imperial style with four stories of windows framed by elaborate moldings and the dormers of a garret floor peeking out between the gargoyles perched on the roof balustrade. Half the double leafed front door opened at Sam's knock to reveal Sallie's butler.

Crawley was a very tall, colorless individual with broad bent shoulders and mournful eyes set in a long cadaverous face. His butler's livery hung on him like a shroud. Sam had always wondered a bit about Crawley. There was something not quite human about him, or maybe not quite alive. But he didn't smell like a Zombie and no Vampire would stoop to being a butler. (2)

"Good evening, Captain Vimes," he said in a voice like yawning tomb. "Good evening, my lady."

Sam's fussing over the new coat and silk stockings had made the couple fashionably late. All four sisters, with their husbands, were waiting in the blue drawing room. Sallie came forward towing Mr. Brass behind her.

"Sam, you're looking halfway respectable for once. Well done, Sybil! This is my husband Dermot."

He smiled and bowed over Sybil's hand. Dermot Brass was not a talker. Mr. Hobbs, Mr. Camphor and Professor Pratt were all introduced in quick succession and then -:

"And last but far from least this is Miss Green, Sybil."

Sam stared in stricken horror as Annise Green shook hands with Sybil, smiling gently and blinking up at the taller woman with large, nearsighted eyes. Annise never wore her spectacles with evening dress.

How could he have been so stupid? Of course Annise was here. She'd been governess to Sukey and Sallie's children for donkey's years. He liked Annise, she was sweet and shy and all those other things his sisters weren't. He thought of her as member of the family - they all did - but once upon a time she'd come close to becoming a literal member of the family - by marriage.

Sybil comparing notes with his sisters was bad enough. Chatting up the most serious of his old girlfriends - and thank the gods the only one she was ever likely to meet! - was almost too grisly to contemplate. Oh well, Sam thought gloomily, at least things couldn't get worse!

The drawing room door opened on Crawley. "Mr. Simon Vimes," he announced lugubriously.

Sam Vimes' eyes closed. Things had just gotten worse.

-----

The exigencies of formal dining meant that Sam was seated at Sallie's right hand at the other end of the table from Sybil. It also meant that Annise was sitting directly across from her on Dermot's left.

"Don't look so worried," Simon said softly from his own place opposite Sam's. "Our Miss Green is the soul of discretion."

Sam glared ferociously at his elder brother. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Simon nodded gently towards Sallie.

She turned a dangerously sweet smile on her youngest sibling. "Samuel Justyce Vimes, are you telling me who I can ask to my own house?"

Sam gulped. "No, Sallie."

"Good. Now eat your dinner and behave yourself - and that goes for you too, Simon."

"Yes'm." Both men gave full attention to their soup.

The ladies, including of course Sybil, departed after desert to take coffee in the drawing room leaving the men to their cigars and after-dinner port. The highly cultured citizens of Quirm and Genua consider this a barbaric custom. However Ank-Morporkian women don't care to be stifled with cigar smoke and bored stiff by sporting news or shop talk, and their men prefer not to hear about the misdeeds of servants or obstetrical disasters, meaning both sexes find a brief separation restful.

Hobbs, Camphor and Pratt promptly moved up to Mr. Brass's end of the table leaving the two Vimes isolated at the foot.

"Look, Sammy, this wasn't my idea," Simon said earnestly. "I'd just as soon as given it a miss but you know our girls."

Sam nodded gloomily, he did indeed. There was a pause. "Still a thief?"

Simon raised his eyebrows. "Still a copper?"

"Okay, point taken."

Simon changed the subject. "That's quite a woman you've got yourself there."

"I know." unaccountably Sam's gloom deepened. "She thinks I'm wonderful."

"So - slightly delusional then?"

In spite of himself, Sam grinned. "Yeah. She thinks swamp dragons are cute too."

"I've heard."

Sam took the cigar out of his mouth, swallowed a swig of water and popped it back in. "Why, Sim, for gods' sakes why?"

His brother's face went cold and still. "Because I was sick of being poor!"

"That's no -"

"It was different for you, Sammy," Simon interrupted. "You don't remember when Da was alive. You don't remember Twitcher Street, having good clothes and enough to eat. And you sure don't remember losing it all!"

At the far end of the table brothers-in-law shot brief glances in their direction then hunched closer together, pretending not to hear. They'd all been married to Vimeses long enough to know better then to get involved when two disagreed.

"You don't remember the first year or two on Cockbill Street trying to survive on a dollar a week and whatever pennies we kids could bring in," Simon continued with quiet passion, his voice a stream of concentrated bitterness that could have corroded stainless steel. "You don't remember anything but poverty, Sam. Maybe you were lucky, you adjusted to it. I didn't. Sukey and Sallie didn't. And gods know Mam never did!"

There was another silence. A long one.

Then: "I remember selling flowers with you and Sallie," Sam offered.

Simon smiled. "That mournful little face of yours was worth another tuppence at least. Do you remember me teaching you to snitch things from barrows?"

"Yes." Sam grimaced. "And I sure as hell remember the tanning Saul gave us both when he found out!"

Simon laughed. "So do I." He sobered. "But Saul was right about thieving from our own kind. You might say he was the one who put me on the track to high class crime."

"I don't think he would have liked that any better," said Sam. "If Saul hadn't been lost at sea -"

"I doubt it would have made any difference, little brother," Simon said quietly, shrugged. "Why not steal from them that has it? It's not like they got it by deserving it. Sheer luck, Sam - or cheating - that's what separates the haves from have-nots."

"Da wouldn't have agreed with that," Sam answered. "Or Saul."

"Da was a good man. So was Saul," Simon said flatly. "I'm not. I make no bones about it, Sammy. I'm not nice, I'm not honorable and I'm not decent."

"Like I am?" Sam's face twisted. "I'm no better than you inside, Sim, I know that, but I don't let it out." Honesty compelled him to add: "Or at least not much."

"Well I did let it out, Sammy, and it's far, far to late to rein it in," Simon said quietly. "But there's worse than me, little brother. Much worse. And it takes one like themselves to keep them off decent folk."

"Assuming there are any in this town," said Sam.

Simon cracked a brief grin. "Well there's your Sybil for one." He nodded towards the head of the table, "and them for three more."

Mr. Camphor stopped pretending not to hear. "What did you call us, Sim?"

"Decent men," he replied.

The Vimes brothers' four brothers-in-law exchanged looks. Tom Hobbs snorted, "That's a fine thing to say about your own sisters' husbands! Now, if you two think you can manage to be civil to each other it's high time that we joined the ladies."

----

1. How many readers know where I got Lonely from?

2. Crawley too may strike readers of Charles Addams as slightly familiar.


End file.
